oh my mistakes, would you really want me? {Leo/Howl} || Masquerade

[[nyte]]

♔ MASQUERADE ♔ I have a lifeline. My fingers have worked their way into the fabric of his shirt, fistfuls of it comforting shaking palms as we sit in the belly of a feral beast. One that shakes and rumbles on its way out of the frying pan and into the fire. Lips, dry and chapped, itch to have a tongue quickly swiped across them For a sweet relief that will never come. The back of my throat still aches, ruined muscle still sending bitter blood down the back of my throat if I'm not careful. Because where there was once a tongue there lays empty space. It was not easy for the Capitolites to dress me. Had my lifeline not been there I wouldn't have tried a damn thing on. I don't care enough to please anyone but he. The buttons upon the dress shirt chafe against my beaten skin, the mask tied around my face nothing but simple strands of cloth. (I refused to even look at the ridiculous material they offered. Ones with feathers and stupid, stupid colors.) I am not like them, nothing like the beasts who hold me hostage here. I am simple and lame, dumb in their eyes and probably in the eyes of those back home. Everything is so complicated, harsh colors shouting loudly at me as I pass, making my careful way into the threshold. I hold onto him even tighter as we walk, leaving the purring beast behind.  I rest my head upon his shoulder, burying my face in the fabric of his shirt as if it will shield me from the terrifying creatures that surround me. Bumps have made their way onto my arms, snaking up the back of my neck and leaving sweat upon my brow. And the whole of my body will not it stop shuddering. As though a cold front has taken it upon itself to make the whole of my life a living Hell. (Because I think Hell has frozen over by now.)  My breath is that of shallow desperation. The kind that plagued me within those damned cages. Where everything smelt of blood and metal and death. Constant panic snakes its way into my throat and I want to make the only sound I'm still capable of. I want to scream. I can feel the heat of other bodies nearby, closing in on me. Suffocating me. Tearing me apart limb from limb so brutally that I can barely keep my grip upon my lifeline. The one I am pressed so tightly against we might end up one person by the end of this awful night.  I can only hope that he has not noticed the tears leaking from the corners of my eyes.

[gamemaker kelsier]

We sit like fallen embers here, in this place. Dust isn't meant to be brutal and yet here we are, burning ourselves up into a million pieces. Or maybe it's just me. Burning alive on the stake, they have proclaimed me "Witch". I tug at my collar, sweat pooling in the space between my shoulder blades but it feels like molten lava.

I wouldn't be here if it were not required of me, if my father had not told me that after my last transgression, I better do as I was told. I agreed with him, no. I did not. It was not a wrong thing that I did, it was a failure that I performed. To make up for said failure, I was to do what I was made to do; be beautiful and stand tall, strong like a lion. Tonight I wilt like a flower beneath a mask made of stardust, finding comfort in the design so similar to a helmet. It puts a wall of fabric between myself and my adversaries, drowning out the world to leave me a safe, quiet zone.

But I am weak and I am wilting and oh mother please

I must be dying.

My skin burns with fever and the ballroom spins around my head like I am the sun and the four corners are my planets, revolving endlessly and beautifully. It is mathematical and beautiful because of it and I am failure, in it's purest form, I am such a beautiful failure. My grade is on my back, defining me. My dress shirt clings to the skin on my back, becoming one with wounds that will not heal. Someone must have torn the entirety of the skin off of my back while I was unaware.

I can barely stand from the pain.

It clouds my vision and I would cry if I could find a way to put into words the feeling inside of me, like exhaustion. No. Fear? No. Sorrow? No. No. Guilt. Guilt and sadness and anger and betrayal and failure and horror and a terrible weight on my chest.

I deserve the burning sensation underneath my skin, hot daggers in my back and the sweat and my breath comes too fast. My hair is already stuck to my forehead but we have only just arrived. The Avox, the boy, the servant, the enemy(?), the slave, no, the boy. I lean on him and he leans on me and we are small here, ants come to face the Queen. The room takes another turn as we stand in place and I realize that I must be sick.

Rooms don't just spin willy nilly.

Or do they?

Maybe. Maybe they do and I've had it wrong all this time. It's confusing now. I stumble forwards in the crowd, one hand wrapping around the upper arm of my companion and I slowly straighten, like a grandfather with too many knots underneath the skin of his bones, and inside of him like a disease. Somethings are made to never be ruined but I am not and have never been one of those things.

My ruin has been falling together for so many years now.

I don't know what to believe anymore; is the sister whom I love correct, or the boy that I can no longer be without?

Or are they both wrong?

What is right?

Where are we?

There are so many people here.

A ball?

I need air.

My back stings where the woman with the whip for a tongue and the hands full of tails tore the flesh from me piece by piece. I wonder if she knew what she was doing to me when she did so, if she knew that surviving this would be more a question rather than a certainty. For days and days, I have been so tired. Months. Confusion has gripped me for months, along with the intense feeling of darkness and depth. It twists in my stomach, shredding it. I cannot eat or drink, I cannot think. When I think, my only thought is of my failure.

For how long have I been so wrong? Five years? Six?

The numbers blur together in my brain, I cannot make sense of them.

I claw forwards through the colourful crowd like a drunk man unable to balance. Nearly every fresh movement brings pain to the point where I cannot bear it anymore. Sweat pools in the nape of my neck, my back, my brow and the room spins around and around again.

People hiss at me as I stumble into them, some laugh. They must take me for a joke. I don't have the energy to tell them that they are wrong. I need to find a door.

I hit a wall, the side of my body slamming against it and I use it to find my way, the room spins far too much for me to navigate by my feet alone. I know I came with a companion but I seem to have lost them. Or did they lose me? Wasn't it someone I had to protect?

Her?

No.

It was a him. You can see his age by the rings left in the stump of his tongue from where she, the lady with the claws cut it with her axe. She had them hold me down and she took it from him. She told me that she was disappointed in me and I did not scream, I didn't.

I didn't as she brought the whips down across my back fifty times because I am not the child she thinks I am. I am not. I am strong. I am not a boy.

No.

I am a man?

Yes.

The woman, that's her. My sister, that's her. Where is she?

If I can find her, then maybe I will be alright.

I cannot remember if she came tonight as well or not. Memories of her are beginning to fade and I am frightened. I cannot lose her.

My hands crawl across the wall and curl around pieces of decor. My face is impassive, an infinity far greater than anything we mere mortals can think of, hundreds of small diamonds flown onto a black as night background.

It is sapping my strength, my entirety to wear it.

But was I ever strong in the first place? Wasn't that just a lie too? A failure?

I can't keep it all straight anymore.

With a sigh, I crash through a door leading out into a long hallway, one side of which is speckled with large french doors, all flung open to taste the defrosting spring air, to keep the party from overheating.

A feeling of intense release swims through me and I relax my body. For a moment I stand tall as I've always been instructed to, face tilted slightly back underneath the mask in order to feel the breeze upon my neck and then the world is darkening as if I am being swallowed by starlight.

I stumble backwards against the wall and where my back hits it, pain screams through me. My breath catches in my throat and I turn,slumping against the wall on my side and slowly falling to my side, breathing heavily beneath the mask. I don't have the strength to remove it before the darkness overwhelms and I become a galaxy.

[[nyte]]

♔ MASQUERADE ♔ The loud music is distracting. It surrounds me, snakes it's fingers down my throat so violently that I gag on the air. Gag on the heavy bodies surrounding me and I can't breathe or think and everything hurts. And there's blood, thick and heavy, curling down my throat from a barely healed wound. Where my tongue once was there is only a thick metal taste. It washes thick down my throat, painting my lips a ruby hue before I can swallow the rest of it down and I think I'm going to be sick. I don't want to be here. I need to go home. (Which home is that? The peacekeeper's house? District Twelve?) (Anywhere but here. Anywhere but here.)  I turn back, fingers finding a familiar grip and moving to press my face into the fabric of the peacekeeper's. But I stagger back instead, shoved so hard that I'm on my ass in a second and the crowd swallows me up. Hungry jaws chewing me up and spitting me out and repeating until I manage to get to my feet. And I could only catch a glimpse of my assailant's mask before they disappear into the swarm without a second thought. It wasn't him. It wasn't him. It wasn't him. Where is he?  And she's ripping out my tongue once more. I can feel her fingers around the muscle, pulling it taught as a blade snakes into the back of my throat. The first cut doesn't go clean through the flesh. Instead she saws at it and he's still there but he can't get to me. And I thought for a second that maybe it was all a disgusting ploy to ruin me, to break me before I died. But it's his eyes as he watches, watches the last strand of muscle disconnect with my throat and watches me scream and clap my hands over my mouth. His eyes don't leave mine and I'm so scared and confused that consciousness leaves me in a second. And the only thought clinging to my consciousness was that he tried to save me.  He tried. I'm on my feet, wiping the pooling blood on the back of my hand and staggering through the crowd as though I'd had one too many of the drinks my kin deliver on silver platters. And I can only think of getting home in this minute. It's the only place I know anymore.  I'm so alone that the silence consumes me. It burns into my cheeks like the tears dripping off of my chin. My mask hangs haphazardly off of one ear and everyone is so loud that I can't hear a thing.  The minute I stumble out of the ballroom I can breathe again. I press my hands against my knees, chest rising and falling in desperation. And the sudden absence of bodies around me stings like the wasp nest I once disturbed late at night when I was a more foolish child. I am alone, trapped within the cage again and he's not here and- There's a body pressed against the wall. I tear the mask from my body leaving it to be trampled upon the concrete as my knees hit the floor beside him harder than I intended. I peel the galaxy off of his jaw, strangled sob spraying blood against my palm.  No no no no.  I want to scream. No no no no. But I can't make a sound. I can't even speak unless he opens his eyes. And my hands are unsteady as they tear a length of cloth from the hem of the expensive Capitol cloth. My fingers work their way into his shoulder, shaking him gently while the other hand wipes the sweat laying dormant upon his brow. And I can't call for help. I can't do a damn thing to help him.  I am but a mouse in the hall of kings.

[gamemaker kelsier]

AND HE BURNS HOLES IN YOUR

LEO FENWICK

SKIN WITH HIS MOUTH.

I don't make a sound.

She wants me to, so I don't.

The whip, it eats at my skin, the barbed ends tearing it away from bone and muscle and sinew. She wants to see me crying, begging. That's what she likes. I keep my mouth shut.

I began in a kneeling position, arms held by chain attached to the walls on either side of me. With each blow, I have fallen farther and farther forward. I no longer have the strength to keep myself in an upright position. I barely have the strength to keep myself conscience. The only thing that does is the image of that boy, etched into my mind. Howl.

I watched as they pulled his tongue out of his mouth, piece by bloody piece. Two guards held me in place but I struggled weakly in their grasp anyway. I had meant to save him, instead I had doomed us both. I tried to tell him, tried to catch his panicked gaze. All I saw in his eyes was fear and loathing. All I saw was his hatred for me.

There was a time when it would not have bothered me, when I would have been happy for it. I thought that I was performing justice. This was not justice, this was pure sadism. This was evil. I am on the evil side. My sister, Lilac. She was always talking about good and bad. When she was killed by an Avox I thought that made them the evil ones. I assumed that those from the districts were deserving of their lot.

Howl had a sister too. He just wanted to keep her safe, to make her happy.

Like Lilac was to me.

Please let him not be dead.

The whip bites into my skin once again but I am not yet numb and a grunt of pain slips from my lips despite myself. Blood drips down my bare back, mixing with the white fabric of my regulation white peacekeeper uniform pants. I should be screaming. I was meant to be screaming.

But I have been tamed since birth not to make such sounds.

I deserve this anyway. I failed Howl. I promised to save him, I told him to trust me. I was wrong. Justice is merely a mirage in a place like the detention center, a shimmering dream. It does not exist. I was foolish. This feeling is a worse pain than any physical one I could receive. It sits heavy on my shoulders, weighing me down, drowning me. I am drowning me.

It is blood in my throat. I spit it out.

Psyche is angry for my lack of sound. She punishes me for it, digging the whip into my skin again and again and again until all I know is nothing.

▴ ▲ ▴

Skin. It is too hot. Take it off me. Take it off. I am burning, alive I am burning. Suffocation comes quick. Crying, tears of heat, down my face. It hurts. It hurts. I am on fire. My back. It's on fire, cut it off, cut it off. A cry, that was mine. My lips made that sound, from me. Weak. A mewl. From me. My arms. They are too heavy. Dead weight like waterlogged wood. I try to turn my head. No. It doesn't. It needs to be colder, can't breath.

The cloud is taken from my face.

I gasp air in.

Can't see, eyes are shut.

Try to open them.

Can't open them.

Too heavy.

Too heavy.

Shaking. Tugging. Whimper from me. It hurts. Stop.

Cold. On my forehead, cold and soft.

I sigh.

It's good.

Can't speak.

Can't open my eyes.

Too heavy.

I sink.

▴ ▲ ▴

Three days after the whipping and they told me to stay in bed, not to move but I am a Fenwick and a soldier and it is unseemly for me to stay in bed. It burns but I force myself to stand, grabbing wildly for the IV stand so I don't topple over. I pull my uniform jacket on over crisp white bandage stained with my blood and I tear the IV out of my hand. I grimace. It is the least of my pain but it is good to focus on that instead of the way my back burns.

Then I am gone, leaving the Peacekeeper hospital on the outskirts of the Capitol and making my way to the Avox pens. I know that the chance is slim of finding the boy there, Howl. Chances are that he is already sold. I have to try though, I have to find him. If he is sold then I will track down his buyer and use the Fenwick wallet to purchase him back. I promised I would help him. I ignore the pain in my back and I get on with it.

I find him after an hour of search. My eyes roam over the cages and an attendant guides me, the owner himself. He is overjoyed at having a Fenwick at his Avox pens. We always buy in groups and pay well.

He is in the corner of a cage, a bandage over his mouth. He shares the cage with a few others but I ignore them, all of my energy is spent on finding him. I can barely think, my back hurts so intensely. I gesture at him. The attendant tries to convince me that I don't want him. I assure him I do, swaying gently on the spot. It is hard to focus. Perhaps he thinks me intoxicated. He doesn't question me further and accepts my exorbitant offer.

He opens the cage door.

I reach my hand out for Howl.

I have found him.

[[nyte]]

H O W L 

There are tears crawling down his cheeks, long damp streaks that I would never have imagined a peacekeeper capable of. They were soulless creatures who didn't care for people like me, whose large hands wrapped around my neck and pressed me into the dirt as I desperately tried to reach my sister kicking and flailing and biting an impenetrable barrier. As I begged just to see her one last time before they killed me. I was wrong about them. Just maybe I was wrong about them. 

My fingers shake as they work their way along the corners of his eyes, erasing the pain escaping from them with a quick motion. His skin burns, white hot and damp against my own. I ease his head into the crook of my arm, cradling his head gently as I pull him completely into my lap, pressing my forehead to his as grief clings to the tip of my nose. A pitiful sound breaks through his lips, a desperate kind of whisper that seemed to take most of his energy to produce. 

Leo. I scream silently, pulling him closer to my chest and rocking the both of us gently just as I used to when pain kept my Juni up with the same warm skin and desperate cries. And I need to help him but he cannot hear my sorrow, the screams that reverberate around my brain and trap themselves behind my lips. 

Wake up. Wake up! You bastard what am I supposed to do?! 

I want to help him. I want to make it all go away. It's a kind of desperate need that burns the inside of my chest. He is not the same scary man I once saw, who stuck a needle in my skin and broke my flesh with his fists. He's innocent and pure and has no idea how the world works because he actually thought that he could save me. 

I try to calm him, to quell the pained whimpers shaking his lips with gentle circles traced into his abdomen and quiet whispers of shh into his ear. 

Please stop crying, Leo. 

The last time I touched somebody so intimately was months before my arrest. A boy in the guild with dark red hair and pretty eyes had kissed me underneath the full moon because we both had too much to drink and were lonely and stressed and scared. His lips were clumsy and eager and he bit so hard upon my bottom lip that it bled. And I cannot help but notice, even jaw clenched with pain and drained of all color, how much prettier Leo is than he. 

There's a kind of fondness that has been growing for the small boy ever since he arrived in the cages. I remember how the sound of his voice had woken me from an uneasy slumber, drawing in a sharp breath inward and burning the sewn-together stump of what had been clumsily and passionately removed days before. I thought surely, I was going mad. There was no way he had found me, the peacekeeper whose eyes had turned gentle, who was foolish enough to try to save me. 

But sure enough he appeared, small and worn in front of the door with eyes that lit up the moment he saw me. And he whispered to the awful gatekeeper until he opened the door and undid the shackles having torn into my wrists and ankles. (The marks are still bright red upon my body, I can see them now upon the hand still tracing Leo's body.) 

His hand remained clasped within mine until we reached his house. Home. And I had clung to him so tightly that my knuckles were white from strain and his red from irritation. And from that moment on there we were sewn together. Fates entwined just as tightly as our fingers had been. And I cannot lose him. Not now. Not so soon. 

"Leo!" I try to speak, lips wrapping around the words but all that appears is a clumsy grunt. It's feral and inhumane, like an animal's shriek. Embarrassment crawls up my cheeks at the single syllable. Had they not already been stained bright red from grief they would be now. I press my lips together, frustration staining my shirt with more tears.

At least when Juni had been dying, I had done something. I had gotten her the medicine she needed and I had taken care of the little girl I needed more than anything in the world. I had not been as useless as I am now, holding a boy who needed me because my legs refused to move. I couldn't hold my own weight, let alone ours combined. I cannot run for help. I cannot do anything but watch him wither before me. 

Wake up, wake up! Asshole wake up! 

But his eyes stay closed. 

It's like he can't hear me at all.